The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey expects to reap about $60,000 in annual energy savings thanks to a planned series of new solar panels Newark Liberty International Airport. - (The Marino Organization)

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey expects to reap about $60,000 in annual energy savings thanks to a planned series of new solar panels Newark Liberty International Airport.

The agency on Thursday unveiled the first of four new solar installations at the facility — located atop an AirTrain Newark electrical substation — in conjunction with ConEdison Solutions. The 152-panel project marked the first solar installation at any of the authority's airport buildings in the region.

The other three solar sites include a 312-panel project on an AirTrain Newark maintenance building, a 585-panel installation on a Port Authority maintenance building and a 2,145-panel site on a multi-tenant cargo building, the agency and ConEdison Solutions said in a news release.

All told, the planned 3,200-solar panel installation will cover 62,000-square-feet of rooftop space and will supply the airport with some 817,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, equivalent to powering 61 homes with electricity or removing 90 vehicles from the road annually, the news release said. That's equivalent to conserving 53,000 gallons of gasoline or 992 barrels of oil, or saving 3.5 acres of trees from deforestation.

That amounts to about $60,000 in savings on electricity costs per year.

Christopher Zeppie, the agency's director of environment and energy programs, said that "solar panels atop the roofs of buildings at Newark Liberty are an innovative way to make use of little-used space to help reduce the agency's carbon footprint."

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Joshua Burd

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Josh Burd covers real estate, economic development and sports and entertainment. Before joining NJBIZ in 2011, he spent four years as a metro reporter in Central Jersey. Email him at joshb@njbiz.com.

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